I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and this woman passed by, and my friend said, “if I had her body I would do something about the face”. This woman has a great body and hair, and you can see that she is in her late forties, early fifties; but you can only see it in her face.

In this era of cult to youth, is it possible to age ‘gracefully’?

Do we have to go under the knife to appear younger than what we really are?

Get the boobs, the botox, the lifts, and die looking like a wax version of ourselves?

I am all for taking care of yourself and looking good, but how far is too far?

We see the Hollywood “role models” making themselves look like caricatures of themselves is that what we want?

I think we should learn to love ourselves, and every stage of life has its good parts, why not embrace them. That is just me…

Editor’s Note: The Latino rights organization National Council of La Raza says the controversy over its name is the result of a word lost in translation.

SAN DIEGO – The National Council of La Raza spends most of its time protecting and advancing the rights of Latinos through advocacy and community work. But as it wrapped up its convention in San Diego last week, it found itself defending its name.

That’s because activists who oppose illegal immigration are saying in e-mails, during street protests and through the media that “La Raza” means “The Race,” and have been calling the organization a hate group. Read the rest of this entry »

I was talking to a friend the other day about the standards of beauty and how they vary across cultures. This came about because a coworker was talking about weight loss and how she had lost a lot of weight but she still had a bit of a belly, another coworker said to her: “at least you don’t have hips”. Like that was something good, her asset.

This got me thinking, that her comment could be offensive in my culture. We want hips, you have to have hips in order to have a small waist.

The women’s body varies tremendously and what is considered beautiful varies as well. For my culture a women must have hips, butt, boobs… the ideal is the hourglass figure; we call it the guitar body (cuerpo de guitarra). I look at some of the standards here in the US like Pamela Anderson, she has no hips, if you took away the boobs, she has a the body of a teenage boy (of course she is more than that).

I have several friends that growing up were teased for not having ‘junk in the trunk’, one of my friend’s mother would go as far as to say to her she would never get a man because her behind looked like ‘somebody had ironed flat’ (this is common expression too). I have a friend that got butt implants.

Yesterday I turned on Despierta America (Wake Up America), the Spanish version of the Today Show and Good Morning America, they had a segment telling women how to get Jennifer Lopez and Shakira’s butts. They talked about exercises not only to make it shapely and firm, but also how to increase it in size. Here in the US I see girls obsessed over the size of their boobs, the boobs must be large the hips must be small, in other places it is the opposite.

I worry about people, specially young girls and women, that try too hard to fit a certain mold of beauty. There is societal pressure to fit that mold, what ever it is, from friends, family members, society, the add industry, TV, magazines. Some go on crazy diets, starvation, anorexia, or if they have the means they opt for plastic surgery. Some girls are receiving a boob job for their 16 birthday.

I think the female body is beautiful, I know the male readers will agree. What some people consider beautiful others don’t. The fashion changes every few years and what was in yesterday won’t be tomorrow. We must love the body we are in, strive to keep it healthy. Don’t worry so much about what others think, and don’t try to be something you are not. If you love your body and yourself, just the way you are, you are going to find a lot of people that will love you the same way.

A legal interpreter Professor Camayd-Freixas speaks out to the New York Times about the legal process the undocumented immigrants when through during the raids. He offers a glimpse of the behind the scenes process.

What happens when the defedant does not understand the charges? What happens when they are given a choice of bad or worse? What happens when they do not know their rights or that they have any? Are there other choices?

There are cultures where women cover every part of their body and there are some that have all out in the open.

I don’t have an issue with the naked body, but I have an issue with having to show it when I don’t want to.

I have been going to the gym… I know… good for me! 🙂 I visited a number of gyms before I could find one where I felt comfortable joining. Modesty was one of my issues, as well as cleanliness and friendliness.

I went to a local gym where the showers did not have curtains or doors, and there was no private place to change clothes. Everybody was walking around naked and Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of the best news ever. People that had been taken hostages in excess of 5 years or more, have been freed thanks to an impeccable operation by the Colombian government.

Colombian president Alvaro Uribe has kicked the guerrillas butt and showed that it can be done.

Let me track back. There is a leftist group in Colombia known as FARC, they started as a leftist movement to turn Colombia into another Cuba; this was over 40 years ago. They have since become a fighting army of drug dealers. They use kidnapping for ransom and drug production and trafficking as means to support their cause.